March 15, 2017

There’s no number for this property in the book so the actual house remains something of an unknown but it was on The Regent Park’s Outer Circle that a “young married couple of humans”, Mr and Mrs Dearly, lived along with their “owners”, a married couple of dogs named Pongo and Missis Pongo.

Yes, they’re all characters in Dodie Smith’s 1956 book, The Hundred and One Dalmatians. And the house? Well, Mr Dearly worked in the City where he was something of a “wizard of finance” and having done the government a “great service” – described in the book as “something to do with getting rid of the National Debt” – he had, as part of his reward, been lent a “small house” on the Outer Circle where he and his wife lived with their dogs and two nannies.

While living there Missis gives birth to a litter of 15 puppies, the kidnapping of which by the dastardly Cruella de Vil, sets Pongo and his wife off on a journey to rescue them. They do so and manage to save more than 80 other puppies from de Vil (the 101 figure comes when the whole lot return to the Dearly’s home and, along with a few others including Pongo and Missus, take the total family to that number).

The Regent’s Park, of course, plays a key role in the book and subsequent films (see below) – it was in the park, for example, that Pongo engaged in the communication system of “twilight barking” to find out where his puppies were.

The book has, of course, been made into a film several times including a Disney animated version in 1961 and a Disney live action film starring Glenn Close in 1996 (although the plot has been altered somewhat) as well as a musical.

Meanwhile Smith (who based Pongo on her own Dalmatian of the same name), did go on to write a sequel to her book. Titled The Starlight Brigade, it tells a story of intergalactic proportions with the dogs of the world – led by Pongo – being offered the chance to leave the Earth and escape the threat of nuclear war. They decide to stay.

PICTURE: Looking across the Boating Lake in The Regent’s Park to the Outer Circle. Phil Russell/The Royal Parks